iPad Some questions before updating 1st gen iPad to 5.1.1

[deluge23]

Hey guys, I owned the original iPad and it is running iOS3.2.2 for many years now. It is jailbroken BTW. After procuring my iPhone 4s I had finally decided to upgrade the firmware to the latest version of 5.1.1. As of now there are some questions that I had and I would be glad if they are solved before I proceed with the update, just to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

1) Will the latest update slow down my first gen iPad? I had read quite some comments whereby people are reporting some slow down after updating it. I am not going to install or customize it to those fancy theme aside from SBSettings and some handy tweaks. Will it still slowdown my iPad?

2) I had been using TinyUmbrella to store the SHSH blob. However it only saved the SHSH for 5.1.1 instead of 3.2.2. Is it normal or I understand the concept wrongly?


Hope to get some answers soon. Your help is very much appreciated so that I can update it with a peace of mind

 

[chickenwingfly]

Hey there!

1) Will the latest update slow down my first gen iPad? I had read quite some comments whereby people are reporting some slow down after updating it.

Your only bet is trying yourself, but I've also read a LOT about people ranting over how sluggish it is.
A friend of mine for instance has a 3rd ten iPod Touch with iOS5 and it runs fine, but then experience might vary from user to user (not comparing an iPod touch to the iPad, but just saying, that iOS 5 on older devices might work just fine albeit not as good as in the newer ones).
That said, I guess you would have peace of mind if you had the chance to downgrade, in case things get ugly.

I am not going to install or customize it to those fancy theme aside from SBSettings and some handy tweaks. Will it still slowdown my iPad?

Depends on your definition of "handy tweaks" hehehe. SBSettings I think is fine as a regular crashing-free tweak for the most part, but other tweaks no matter how "simply" or "small" on paper, might render your device to the point of being unusable.
If you install one tweak at a time and then use your iPad and see it all goes fine, you'd be far more prepared in case things get ugly.

2) I had been using TinyUmbrella to store the SHSH blob. However it only saved the SHSH for 5.1.1 instead of 3.2.2. Is it normal or I understand the concept wrongly?

Not normal, it should have the 3.2.2.
Now, one thing bugs me about your statement, and that is "I had been using...". Are you sure you saved the SHSH blob back in 1980 (just messing with you) when 3.2.2 was being signed by Apple?
If that was the case you don't "have been..." you just did once, since you're on that old firmware.
Please understand, I'm not trying to be a grammar nazi here (I'm not even a native English speaker), just feel a bit odd about your statement because if you are "stuck" on that old firmware then my bet is that you only used TinyUmbrella once, a long time ago, to save, the blobs, so you might have to think about it ("Did I really, really, saved the blobs for 3.2.2?").

Now, the only possibility for your SHSH blobs to be stored somewhere is Cydia.
Open it up and it should show 3.2.2 up there, so you know you could use TinyUmbrella with the "Set Cydia hosts on exit" option to recover from Saurik's realm instead of your desktop computer, which, apparently has NOT the blobs for your current firmware so if you upgrade to 5.x you wouldn't be able to downgrade.

So all in all, I think you understand the concept pretty well and your last chance might be Cydia.

 

[deluge23]

Hearing you say that make me kinda ashamed of my statement there due to my poor grammar usage. Disregarding that, my point is I had not backup any SHSH using TinyUmbrella until now.

Just some info, upon launching Cydia what I see is SHSH: iOS 4.3.5 on top of the page. I am not really sure whether it is displayed as it should but, isn't it supposed to be 3.2.2?

Another question is why the SHSH blob of 5.1.1 is being saved in TinyUmbrella when I do not have the firmware installed?

And this leaves me with the ultimate question, "Am I screwed to a point of no return if I should decide to update the firmware"?

 

[chickenwingfly]

Hearing you say that make me kinda ashamed of my statement there due to my poor grammar usage. Disregarding that, my point is I had not backup any SHSH using TinyUmbrella until now.

Sorry, as I said, I don't mean to come off as a grammar nazi.
But now we're clear:

Just some info, upon launching Cydia what I see is SHSH: iOS 4.3.5 on top of the page. I am not really sure whether it is displayed as it should but, isn't it supposed to be 3.2.2?

I'm no jail breaking authority, and I haven't even dissected a blob myself, BUT, the theory says that:
1. SHSH saving is only tied to your UDID and Apple's signature server. NOT your current firmware. So what this means is that every time you open Cydia (or TinyUmbrella) you have the chance to save the SHSH blobs for the current iOS version, disregarding your installed version (3.2.2). So, in theory, you opened Cydia when Apple was signing 4.3.5, hence why you have those blobs right there. Why you don't have 3.2.2 ones, beats me (maybe Cydia wasn't auto-saving back then?). Maybe you jailbroke after 3.2.3 was released (or 3.3, you get the point).
2. In theory you should be able to downgrade to 4.3.5 via TinyUmbrella or redsn0w, using Cydia's own signature server (instead of, let's say, TinyUmbrella's end-user server version bundled-in).

Another question is why the SHSH blob of 5.1.1 is being saved in TinyUmbrella when I do not have the firmware installed?

Because, as per (1) above, it can save SHSH blobs for the currently signed firmware version of Apple (5.1.1) disregarding your iOS version (3.2.2).

And this leaves me with the ultimate question, "Am I screwed to a point of no return if I should decide to update the firmware"?

The theory says, you have a 4.3.5 point of return via Cydia, but it's sort of a leap of faith (I never used Cydia to downgrade, only TinyUmbrella, so can't share any success or rants about it).

If I was you, I'd upgrade. How crazy could Apple be, to allow users to upgrade to 5.x on the iPad 1st gen, knowing it would just not run fine? (Of course this statement would get trolled to hell in say, a youtube video about Android vs iOS, or Apple vs the World). I'd hate being "stuck" on a really old firmware, but that's just me (I always like to have the latest software version).

 

[deluge23]

Your explanation really helps me a lot in ways that you couldn't possibly imagine Now that I have a better understanding on how they work, I will attempt to update it sometime later tonight.

I think you have a great point in your final statement by saying 'How crazy could Apple be, to allow users to upgrade to 5.x on the iPad 1st gen, knowing it would just not run fine?'. I will update here for any changes (be it good or bad) that I might be stumbled upon after updating it. Of course I wouldn't expect it to be buttery smooth like iPad 3 but at least it will be somehow smooth as in 3.2.2.

Once again, thanks so much for the effort to explain these stuffs to me. It is very concise

 

[chickenwingfly]

No problems friend and may the force be with you. Make sure to inform your (hopefully) success!!!

 

[deluge23]

Successful update from 3.2.2 to 5.1.1

Yippie! I'm a happy man now. Finally updated my first gen iPad from 3.2.2 to 5.1.1! Since I'm so happy now, I decided to list down the process from start to finish when performing the update.

1) When updating iTunes prompted me to backup. The process is painfully slow and I have to leave it overnight. After I woke up and checked on it, it seemed to failed during the restore.

2) Make my second attempt to update it via iTunes. The backup is again, slow and I decided to try out restoring via DFU mode.

3) At this point I just keep my finger crossed, hoping that nothing bad (popping error) happened. If anything did happen here it will be a huge error since it is in the lowest level mode without iOS interaction. Progress bar popping up, good news. After roughly 10 minutes or so the progress bar is finished and I'm just relief to see that Slide to setup your iPad wording.

*It turned out that DFU mode is the right choice to go. Perhaps it's because my iPad is previously jailbreaked.

4) Used Absinthe 2.0.4 to jailbreak my iPad. Everything is smooth sailing afterwards.

5) Installed SBSettings, Multistorey, and some minor tweak. No slowdown at all. Perhaps it's because I didn't install any UI customization, which I don't like.

6) Sync back all my previous apps and music via iTunes.

7) Restored all my apps using DataDeposit. Gosh it really works and all my previous saved game are there!! You can't imagine how happy I am.

Over and all, I still didn't noticed any slow down at all, which I think is pretty impressive. Now that I have my iPad updated, its time to try out those apps that requires a minimum iOS 4.0, such as Planetary!

 

[benji888]

Yippie! I'm a happy man now. Finally updated my first gen iPad from 3.2.2 to 5.1.1!

Over and all, I still didn't noticed any slow down at all, which I think is pretty impressive. Now that I have my iPad updated, its time to try out those apps that requires a minimum iOS 4.0, such as Planetary!

FYI: When I updated my first gen iPad to iOS 5 (and up to 5.1.1) it has been sluggish at times. If you do find it to slow down I figured out some things today: most of the slowness had to do with anytime I would bring up the keyboard, while the split keyboard is kinda cool, it does slow things down, so I turned off the split keyboard (Settings-General-Keyboard).

My iPad seems much faster with the above mentioned change and also these changes:

I checked my iCloud settings and, maybe I had a free trial or something, but I turned iCloud off by deleting my account (I wasn't using it anyway).

I also turned off Multitasking gestures.

This may or may not have affected anything but I unchecked all the spotlight search selections as this helped when my old iPhone 3G was slow. (I never use spotlight)

I also have iTunes Wi-Fi Sync turned off, it seemed to be slower with it on, to me, this is not a big deal, just sync with my Mac like I used to, big whoop ...this feature is more for those who don't have a PC or Mac IMO.

After turning all of these off I notice no laggyness with the keyboard, it was sometimes unbearably slow to pop up, especially with google maps, and then it would take a while to catch up with you.

I wish I would have thought of this sooner, it's so much easier to put up with now...I guess I just kept thinking Apple would come out with an update that would not cause lag, the 1st gen iPad isn't really that old, but apparently it will be left out of iOS 6 update, as it just does not have the processing power or memory for more and more updates. (BTW, iOS 4 ran just fine.)

Oh, and one more thing...despite what Apple seems to think, some apps continue to hog memory or somehow interfere with other apps even though they are supposed to be in the "background" and not using memory. I often delete apps from the task bar, and this can solve many issues, including slowness.

(My iPad is not jailbroken, so this may or may not apply to a jailbroken iPad.)

 

[mrboult]

I have a jailbroken ipad1 with iOS 5.1.1

It runs fine and causes me no bother at all. I must say though that coming from ios3 you will notice a difference! My iPad is not as snappy as when I first bought it two years ago. But it is not slow enough to bother me either.

I also agree with many things the above poster said. Except I use multitask gestures as they're great. And I have a JB tweak that clears all back ground apps when I click the home button 3 times. (I find this helps before launching an intensive App live Avid's video editor)